I spotted this bescooped and bespoilered CRX while sitting at a red light yesterday. The original CRX was a neat little car, but thanks to a certain movie, factory original versions are few and far between.

I never cared for Japanese stylings, with few exceptions. This being one of them. A shame the CRX was never continued. The original CRX HF achieved close to 50 mpg without hybrid drive systems or turbo diesels. Today, the CRZ cannot duplicate those mpg numbers, yet it costs more and is a much more complicated machine.

It’s a shame the once clean design of this car is sullied with the boy racer crap. But I think back to my younger years and what the kids were doing to Chevelles and GTO’s. Ladder bars or L-60’s on the rear; priceless parts ripped off and thrown in the trash for the latest piece from the local speed shop.

The times have changed but a young adult’s vision of what his or her car should be like is as old as the Model A and the dawn of the hot rod era…….

Unfortunately, it’s become impossible to find a nice old Civic or Eclipse that hasn’t undergone the same treatment as this poor CRX. Maybe I’m just getting old, but I never got the whole boy racer thing.

Do you think the guy has wiped out the matching front spoiler for the body kit, or realised it was never going to work in the first place? Occasionally I still see these ridiculous kits on cars but rarely without damage.

I knew a guy who owned one of these about 15 years ago, it was nice and original, but he fit a pair of 205 tyres on the rear vs the standard 195s that were on the front. I pointed out that it was a bit pointless being fwd but he didn’t care because it looked cool. How can you argue with that?

“Do you think the guy has wiped out the matching front spoiler for the body kit, or realised it was never going to work in the first place? ”

I’m betting they ran out of Silicone and Zip screws.
That’s what seems to hold them together around here. There is some time and money in that paint job. Shooting Silver can be a bitch without getting Tiger Stripes.

There’s a Mk 1 Fiat Uno Turbo down the road that would be quite a nice car. But someone has stuck a nasty bodykit on it (full of scoops, of course), and now it looks a complete mess. He had it up for sale for a month or two, but nobody bit. A poorly fitted bad taste bodykit is a real off-putter for potential buyers.

When I was a kid in the ’60s, we referred to crap like that as “Highspeed bumper bolts and fuel-injection hubcaps”. I suspect you could find those items in the Warshawsky/J.C.Whitney catalog if you looked hard enough…

A couple of years back I was out with some friends walking in the Pentlands and we’d stopped for lunch at the head of Glencourse Reservoir. It’s a lovely spot – especially on the kind of sunny day this was – but while it feels remote it’s not actually very far from Edinburgh, and there is a very small ungraded access road running beside the reservoir.

Part way through our leisurely lunch the sounds of two “fart-canned” exhausts began to intrude, and we watched two cars (a Vauxhall Corsa and a Citroën Saxo from memory – model names linked to Wikipedia for the benefit of those not in Europe) slowly hove into view along the road. Both had suffered exactly this kind of mistreatment, and both were struggling with the narrow, barely surfaced roadway. God only knows where thought they were going because it’s an access only road that ends about two miles further up the Glen and I can’t imagine either car lived there…

Anyway at the head of the reservoir, near to where we were sitting, there’s a cattle grid in the road. The Corsa reached it first and for a moment the racket from its exhaust was counterpointed by a lovely wrenching sound as its over-lowered wheels caught on its over-sized fiberglass front wing and the whole ridiculous assemblage was torn off and pulled under the nose of the car.

We might have pointed and laughed a bit.

The best part was when – having backed off the grid and retrieved the mangled wreckage of his bodykit – the Corsa driver and his buddy in the Saxo spent a good ten minutes trying to make the wretched thing fit into the back of the Saxo (the back of the Corsa presumably being entirely taken up with speakers).

Every time I see a car’s lines ruined like this it makes me a little sad, but then I remember watching that farce and it cheers me right up again.

Not the Mustang, but the Ranchero Squire is on my “to-do” list. Actually, further west down 4th Avenue (closer to the Moline Municpal Services building) was an avocado green Ranchero 500, about the same year.

sean

Posted October 1, 2012 at 7:11 PM

The Mustang was at the repair shop just behind where the CRX was sitting. It may have just been a visitor.
I didn’t catch the 500. Though I was also fighting with my GPS which was telling me to drive into the River to get to Silvis..
I was pretty amazed at all of the older iron still cruising around there.